Peter Andre has voiced his frustration after he was dragged into the “Wagatha Christie” libel battle between Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney.
The Mysterious Girl singer was mentioned in court as Rebekah was quizzed this week about a 2004 newspaper interview she gave about a purported sexual encounter with Peter.
The article carried the headline “Peter’s hung like a small chipolata, shaved, slobbery, lasts five minutes,” with Rebekah now admitting she was “forced into a situation by my ex-husband” to do the interview.
Responding to comments about his anatomy being discussed in court, and subsequently in the media, Peter shared a two-minute video on his social accounts revealing he felt like he “had to say something”.
“Sorry to Emily [his wife] and the children that have had to see and hear some not very nice things,” he wrote in the caption, before going on to say in the video: “Seeing as I haven’t had much of a say in this, and just let everyone have a laugh and whatever, whatever, I’m just going to put it out.
“Fifteen years this has been going on, and I kept quiet and I didn’t say anything, and I let everyone have their laugh and I let everyone say what they wanted to say.
“Okay yes, now, [Rebekah] has gone to court and admitted that the story was made up, and she did that because her ex-husband forced her to do it. Fair enough.
“But put that all aside and just think how it feels that if a man, or if I had said this, about her anatomy, or a man said something about a woman’s anatomy, and made up something, whatever, I don’t know – you can use your imagination – of saying something very unflattering.
“There would be outrage, there would absolute outrage. But because it’s been said about me, it’s been the butt of all jokes, I’ve taken it for fifteen years.”
He continued: “Some of you are gonna go, ‘oh get over it, don’t say anything, whatever’. You’ve got to understand, what’s even worse is it’s brought up in a High Court, and the lawyer is bringing it up... and it’s brought up again. And the only one that sits there and takes hit after hit about it is me.
“And I’ll be laughing about it for a while, but think about how it would feel if it was the other way around, that’s all I’m saying.
“Okay yes, I think we all know now it’s just a made-up story fine, fine, fine. But it’s a little bit more serious than that. And I think it’s not fair that something like this can happen again and again and again.
“We talk about all sorts of things, about mental health, about being kind and about all that sort of stuff, and nothing seems to change.”
The high-profile libel battle comes after Coleen accused Rebekah’s Instagram account of being behind the leaking of “false stories” about her private life to the media in October 2019.
Rebekah, who is married to Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, denies leaking stories to the media and is suing her fellow footballer’s wife for libel, while Coleen is defending the claim on the basis her post was “substantially true”.